First I'd like to say I just discovered this game one week ago and it is Fantastic. I'm a WW2 era historian focusing on Germany, and the realism of this game is just so phenomenally awesome. Within reason of course, obviously a certain aspect of arcade is required being that it is a game. The highly realistic maps and the massive amount of historically correct vehicles + weapons makes this game really appeal to my interests. I love it. Few Examples: the Sturmgewehr 44 not being available in 1941; Heavy usage of bolt-action rifles; Having a limit on firearms such as the MP40 & other SMG's/MG's; The Gewehr 41 being reloaded with two 5rd stripper clips, etc. And my personal FAVORITE part of FH2 which I have never ever seen in any other FPS game is the inclusion of two rifles from the "Primitiv-Waffen-Programm" which was initiated by Adolf Hitler to manufacture guns for the Volkssturm. The two included in FH2 being the Volkssturmkarabiner VK98 and the Volkssturmgewehr VG 1-5. The VG 1-5 is my absolute top favorite gun ever in history, which is how I actually discovered FH2: searched on imfdb.org to see if there were any games which had it. Forgotten Hope 2 is the ONLY game featuring the VG 1-5, so I downloaded it and was ecstatic to discover the realism. Unfortunately the VK-98 & VG 1-5 are only available on Seelow Heights, would love to see them included elsewhere. (Possible to mod other maps to make it available?) The VK-98 actually isn't single-shot in real life, it has an internal 5rd magazine just like the Kar.98k only it doesn't have the steel floorplate. However even still I've been able to make some kills with it in Seelow .

I played BF2 multi back in 2005 as well as BF:1942, BF:Vietnam in '04, and the CoD games. I played BF:V more than any other game, in 2004 I was 14/15yrs old and it was such an amazing game at the time. Actually being able to drive/fly all the jeeps, tanks, boats, helicopters, planes, as well as some of my favorite guns namely the SKS which you never see in games. However WW2 era FPS type games have always been my favorite.

ANYWAY enough rambling, onto the couple of questions. First and most important, sometimes when playing the game will suddenly start to run VERY slowly, choppy and stuttering. Some maps are worse than others. Point Du Hoc for example is basically unplayable, Omaha Beach gets some lag but still playable, Seelow Heights and Invasion of Crete both work perfect. A lot of the time it happens while sprinting, up close explosions, etc. I play usually with 48 to 55 bots with a slightly uneven ratio giving the opposing team a 5 to 8 bot advantage. 65% difficulty (since I'm new). All graphics settings bare minimum, 70% view distance, 1280x720 resolution, audio is hardware/low quality/EAX on. Now my laptop does suck badly, I know that, if I could afford a better one Id buy it right now. Windows 8.1 64bit, Celeron N2830 Dual Core 2.16gHz (2.41gHz under load/while gaming), Intel HD Integrated Graphics, 4.00GB DDR3 RAM, HDD: Seagate 500gb 5400rpm SATA 6.0Gb/s 12ms Seek Time, Realtek HD Audio. I've removed all of the bloatware, themes disabled, literally nothing running in the background except the bare minimum windows services. I even close explorer.exe when playing FH2. I can run games like CoD: Modern Warfare 3 at maximum graphics settings w/no lag whatsoever. FH2 is really the only game that I have this issue with. Anyone have any possible tips or ideas to resolve this stuttering? I just found this a little bit ago, going to try it: http://fhpubforum.warumdarum.de/index.php?topic=14093.0

Next, on many of the maps most of bots really don't do much. They'll drive a tank out in the middle of nowhere then just sit there doing nothing. Some spawn & just stand idle. Now on the Seelow Heights map the Russians in particular seem very active & determined. Great map. However on other maps the bots don't do much at all. Any solutions to this?

Final question, I've seen many YouTube videos of people playing Pacific maps with the Japanese on FH2? Is this some sort of mod? I searched for it but found nothing. Are there any other downloadable Eastern Front maps available such as the battle of Berlin?

I don't know answers to all of your questions, since I'm not a singleplayer guy, but I can tell you that bots have their issues and they act dumb on many maps. Some of them are not overhauled properly for the singleplayer purposes, sometimes it can be caused by engine limitations. Check the list of "good" maps, which shouldn't have this problem, here (scroll down the first post).

Final question, I've seen many YouTube videos of people playing Pacific maps with the Japanese on FH2? Is this some sort of mod? I searched for it but found nothing. Are there any other downloadable Eastern Front maps available such as the battle of Berlin?

There are only 4 Eastern Front maps in game so far, and none of them has official bot support yet, but I guess you have this patch installed, since you played Seelow with bots, right? Post any questions regarding these maps in that topic, since this patch wasn't made by any of the official FH2 devs, so hopefullly the guy who made it will be able to tell you what causes different bot behaviour on maps like Seelow.

There are some community made Pacific Front maps available to download together with many maps from other fronts as well, you can download them via FH2 Community Updater, which you can grab here.

Note, that none of them has bot support / singleplayer mode as they were made for mutliplayer only. It is also an unnofficial thing and I can't tell if they are planning to add singleplayer mode to thier maps in the future.

Anyway, I highly recomend playing FH2 online to experience the full awesomeness of this mod. It can also be better performance wise, since singleplayer is more hardware hungry and overall it plays less smooth on older computers.

Unfortunately the VK-98 & VG 1-5 are only available on Seelow Heights, would love to see them included elsewhere. (Possible to mod other maps to make it available?)

Yes. You can mod some files to replace pickup kits on other maps with any weapon you want if you will stick with it to singleplayer only. My best advise would be to search for the solution in the modding section of this forum.

I remember when I first disovered FH2. I felt like I was being transported back to the 40's in a time machine

Yes. Sounds like the a CPU bottleneck. BF2 can only use one core to begin with and then adding too many bots to it can lead to slow downs especially if the CPU is under powered. 32 bots should be better.